Chamisa Struggle

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I live in a high desert area and a common native plant is the Chamisa. I much of my backyard totally cleared of most of the brush and grasses a few months ago to reduce the hire hazard during this time of drought but it would have cost a lot more to have several Chamisa plant, some quite large removed, and they weren't close to the house so they were left. One problem with leaving them is that they are crowding out a small tree. Today I tried to do something about them. The smaller ones had gotten bigger since I had last checked. A combination of the Chamisa being a very tough plant and me not having the proper tools led to me only being able to removed one small one and cut the branches off of another small and that was after considerable effort. They have multiple branches that stretch out from the bottom and that are very hard to cut. The main "trunk" is even tougher and is a sort of twisted grouping so that it is very hard to saw through with a hand saw once you can reach it. This was tough work and really tired me out. I wasn't surprised that my back was hurting later but what surprised me was when I was eating my reward after dinner of Hershey Kisses, my thumb started cramping when I tried to unwrap the foil on the Kisses. Sometimes it is just not a just world.